Daily Archives: February 11, 2018

As I do a bit of updating to this site over the next little while, part of that will hopefully be blogging here a little more. There is a question mark on how an individual blog fits in the current ecosystem, but we’ll see how it goes!

(Gorgeous cover art of Abby and Chris by Kevin Wada )

I thought it was past time to shout out a bit about my most recent book (I just got a beautiful box of comps in the mail!). Fresh Romance 2 is the followup to the Eisner-nominated Fresh Romance 1 (for which I drew coffeeshop-romance-with-a-side-of-interdimensional-magic The Ruby Equation, with writer Sarah Kuhn, colourist Savanna Ganucheau, and letterer Steve Wands).

In FR2, I got some extra room to play as I contributed a writer-artist story, Under the Oak Trees (with colour assistance from Nathan Ashworth). It’s a gentle relationship drama, focussed on Abby, an anxious assistant groundskeeper at a forest retreat, and hyper-driven London entrepeneur Chris. For those interested, this was inspired, in a sideways way, by gentle Japanese reality show Terrace House, which included instances of people with very different approaches to life slowly learning to respect eachother’s differences. I wanted to explore this further in a romantic relationship, thinking about what works and what doesn’t, what we do and don’t need and expect from eachother, when we’re all individuals.

(My chapter cover for Part 1)

Since I was writing too, I took the chance to set it in my backyard in the English Midlands, between Sherwood Forest and Nottingham. A sense of place in comics is really important to me, so being able to draw places I can physically be in – and also places that aren’t the usual major cities we tend to see show up – means a lot to me. I’m proud of how these pages turned out, and hope you’ll enjoy getting to know both these characters but also these places as well.

FR2 features Part 1 of the Under the Oak Trees – there’s plenty of room to explore further, and I hope I’ll be able to share more of Abby and Chris’ story with you – but Part 1 is also a full story arc in itself, so don’t worry about being left hanging.

I’ll end with a sneak preview of the first four pages, so please do click through for those! FR2 is available in print through Diamond, so just ask your local comic shop to order it for you, or you can order it online from Emet Comics, Amazon, or digitally via Comixology or Emet!